Enhanced Steam Standalone Client Makes PC Game Shopping Easier

You don't have to wait for Valve to make improvements to Steam's interface. A group of gamers have released an Enhanced Steam client filled with new features to make your PC game shopping easier.

Enhanced Steam displays additional information to help browsing. The games in your library or on your wishlist are both highlighted. MetaCritic user scores, game descriptions, and third-party DRM are all noted. Enhanced Steam also helps you make smarter purchases by providing pricing history on a game and noting how much money you'll save with bundles. Screenshots of the enhanced interface are below.

The improvements extend to other Steam features like the Trading Cards, Marketplace and Greenlight. Here's the full list of Enhanced Steam's advancements:

Store Features

Highlights the content on Steam you already own

Highlights games on your wishlist

Points out 3rd party DRM on games

Shows you how much you really save on a bundle

Displays pricing history for each game

Shows you how much you've spent on your Steam account

Shows you Metacritic User Scores

Adds an "Empty Cart" button to the shopping cart

Adds DLC category information to the product page

Gives you widescreen support information from the WSGF

Shows game descriptions on the Steam homepage

Community Features

Adds an "Add to cart" button on your wishlist

Replaces the Steam Greenlight banner

Shows a transaction summary on the Steam Marketplace

Lets you set a custom background on your Steam profile

Shows your achievement stats on the "All Games" page

Show SteamCardExchange links on badge pages

Shows market price on an item's inventory page

Shows links on your profile to great Steam-integrated sites

Shows you how many games have drops, and how many cards

Gives you advanced badge filtering options

Site-Wide Features

Options page that lets you decide which features to enable

Adds an "Enhanced Steam" menu for quick feature access

Adds a link to the forums back to the community dropdown

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

Fixes the "No Image Available" images on your wishlist

The project started out as a Chrome, Firefox and Opera extension. This latest standalone release can be used with the Steam client itself rather than just the website, though. Both the browser extensions and the standalone client work about the same way, though: after you've sent a request to Steam, javascript is inserted into Steam's response right before it's delivered to your computer.

You can download the standalone client through Github. The download page includes the full instructions for setting it up. If you prefer using Steam through your browser, you'd be better off just grabbing the browser extension.